Working with the BDMLR part 2

We welcome back guest author Gilli Graham with tales of her work with BDMLR. First we must appologise first for the lack of updates. Katrin has been working on her poster for the European Cetacean Society conference and that has stalled progress on the blog recently. But we will be back up to speed soon!

First Seal Rescue and Release
By Gillian Graham

On 8 February I got a call from Jon Brooks (Thanet Coordinator) about a young male common seal. I then proceeded to Palm Bay to meet Jon at the harbour. We got the cage out of the car and then went to assess the seal, he looked a healthy weight, but had a substantial injury to his rear flipper. The injury was so bad we could see the broken bone, muscle and tendons, which meant in jumping this seal, we would have to be extremely careful. So with towel in hand I jumped the seal, who was very well behaved and it went as well as could be expected. When the RSPCA representative arrived we transferred the seal to her cage, a task which was not so simple.

The seal had my towel under his body, so had to use the one the RSPCA had brought, so with a lot of wriggling and growling, Jon helping me we got him into the other cage. He was then taken to Mallydams, but I later heard he had to be put to sleep, which for me was upsetting, more so as my first rescue. On 18 February I went to a seal release that was being done by Mallydams. It was two female seals with one being black, the black seal having previously been rescue by Jon Brooks and others on Boxing Day.
The other one was a seal that had previously been rescued from Jersey. Upon arrival at Mallydams, they had already began to drain the enclosure, this did not seem to bother the seals at all, until the vets entered the enclosure with their equipment and the seals started to growl a bit. Both seals were than tagged and then weighed, with the black one weighing 35 kilograms and the other seal weighing 42 kilograms. They were then taken to a suitable site to be released, where both shuffled over to the wash, until they felt comfortable to swim off and for me personally was a lovely thing to see.